VinLAURiA

I really don't think it's fair to put the PS4 at S-tier when it ended up sharing - like - 95% of its library with the Xbone, which got a much lower rank. That thing coasted on the pre-launch hype of its "sick burn" towards Xbox at E3 2013 for years, with an utterly anemic library until Bloodborne came out (not helped by ditching all BC) and even after that, only really got one or two must-play exclusives per year, most of which have since been ported away. In retrospect, its proclamation of being the "savior" console against big mean Microsoft ended up being a load of hot air when we eventually ended up where everyone lambasted the Xbone for trying to take us anyway, in no small part due to Sony's own actions later on, many of those with the PS4 itself. It wasn't even the more powerful system by the end when factoring in the Pro/X models, and if anything, I'd say Xbox is the more consumer-friendly brand nowadays, largely from all the steps they've taken during the Xbone era such as Game Pass and massive efforts in multigenerational BC. Now, does that mean the Xbone itself was all that great? Perhaps not exclusives-wise, but with a near-identical library to it and pale shadows of the steps MS made, the PS4 is hella overrated. Probably Sony's weakest home system, depending on how the PS5 fares by the end. Bear in mind, I largely liked PS1-PS3 and the PS5's DualSense is an awesome piece of tech. But the PS4 just had nothing going for it besides PR the other two brands could only dream of at the time. If anything, Gen8 really just went to show us how much slick marketing counts as much as the actual product itself; it's probably the biggest waste of potential a gen has ever been. I mean, don't even get me started on the undeserved fate that befell the poor Wii U, especially after how legendary the original Wii era was. Hell, how did the Wii not end up in S-tier?

Those systems really deserved so much better than the lot they got. Both were sabotaged almost immediately in different ways, and it meant a quick move away from what was the Nintendo generation I had been most excited for going in (and I've been on board since the SNES days). Super Mario Maker 1 still had a dedicated community, particularly due to the amiibo costume support along with some other features that didn't make it into the sequel. Not to mention how you could get SMM1 courses for free due to Nintendo Network (the 3DS/Wii U online infrastructure) being a free service, whereas SMM2 requires a paid Nintendo Switch Online membership for its online features (like all Switch games), including just downloading courses. Also, "commercial failure" doesn't mean "bad". I'll keep banging that Wii U drum until the day I die.

I wonder what the latest news is on MicroLED and QDEL.

That thumbnail... Linus is starting to look old.

It feels like the form-factor has potential, but it just suffered from being a first-gen product. I skimmed through the response of the guy on Reddit who suggested the thing and he did make a point that Linus seemed to never try using the T-shape orientation in anything other than the big screen on top, and I have to agree I can see some use for the other orientations which I think Linus missed out on. That being said, considering all the weight is in the back half of the phone, I do wonder how comfortable those other orientations would be to hold. And there are some other design decisions that were just really not very thought out, like the position of the side buttons. If anything, I'm sad that LG's phone decision shut down, because I'd have liked to see them keep trying with this form-factor. Maybe an LG Wing 2 would've ironed out most of the issues? As for the app compatibility, this is a slight pivot but I strongly believe that more apps - indeed, more technology in general - should be made with the potential of multiple screens in mind. Not specifically in the LG Wing form-factor, but more agnostically-designed to just know there are multiple screens and gracefully adapt to that and whatever relative sizes they have, with the Wing just naturally reaping the benefits of that by virtue of being a multi-screen device. You can lump PCs and gaming into this too, which is why I was so big on the multi-screen trend in gaming a decade ago with the Wii U, (3)DS, Xbox SmartGlass, and what Sony was doing between their handhelds and home consoles. Not to mention everyone who have multi-monitor PCs. We need to start designing our software to be able to take advantage of that more if desired. There's even a whole discussion to be had on building multi-display experiences out of several independent devices, but I digress.

The Novint Falcon! I wanted one of these back in the day, with the gun grip. I remember that TF2 had gotten support for it, and it had the thing force-feedback against you based on each gun's weight and recoil. TF2 got a lot of support for weird hardware like that; it later supported the Razer Hydra and then Oculus' first VR prototypes way before anything else on the market. I still think there's merit to the force-feedback thing. I'd love to see it miniaturized into control sticks, which people have already started prototyping. Yeah, the DualSense has its adaptive triggers which can adjust their resistance, but that's only half of the equation. I want sticks and triggers that push back against you. I think that's the next big step in controller evolution; I can see a lot of uses for it.

We must have not been playing the same system, because "poorly thought-out" is the last thing I'd use to describe the way the GamePad was integrated. The games which actually bothered trying to utilize the GamePad properly (sadly, mainly Nintendo games and little else) and even simply navigating the system software showed massive potential for what could be done by bringing multi-screen experiences from the PC to the living room, especially with that second screen being a touchscreen in the palm of your hand. The notion that the second screen should only ever mirror the main one for remote play does a disservice to the capabilities of the tech. Don't take the way the Wii U got snubbed by everyone as an indictment on the hardware concept. There was plenty else which went wrong that led to its poor sales, and I highly doubt making it a bog-standard console with a basic controller would've helped the system any when the GameCube did exactly that and sold just about as poorly. Making the GamePad optional would have guaranteed no one would have ever bothered trying to utilize it, because non-standard features never get touched. Even PSVR proved that, with a less than 5% attach rate among all PS4s. Less sales than even the Wii U itself.

The Western marketing for the Wii U was a travesty. It completely failed to do the thing justice and to this day I have no idea what they were thinking. Especially because the marketing was actually pretty good in Japan and - what a surprise - it actually remained the top-selling Gen8 home console there until some time in 2016, I think. PS4 only finally overtook the Wii U in Japan as the Wii U was nearing end-of-life.

So can we all finally admit that the Wii U was a good idea that deserved to sell far better and get far more support than it did? Because I've been waiting eleven years for that vindication.

Anyone else getting a little stunod with the home tech videos? I guess it's a lull season for tech developments as a whole and so they need filler, but in that case I'd love to see some more videos on unusual devices or factory tours again, some more in-depth product reviews than what Short Circuit offers, or even just some tech roundups/buyers' guides since we're getting into that season. Pretty much every other video these days is about Linus upgrading his home setup, and as fun as they can be to occasionally check into and see the antics ensue, I seriously can't bring myself to care enough about what a guy with far more money than me is doing to further smart-ify a home already far nicer than my own that my eyes don't glaze over when I see the day's upload is yet another home tech video. I've stopped trying to force myself through watching each one because there's nothing new I'm getting out of them at this point besides "look at this nice new house I've moved into".

I'm actually interested in the "Flex S" style in that folding displays video they did at CES 2023. I think three-panel folding has the potential to be an even bigger game-changer than today's two-panel folding, simply due to all the ways you can use it, with the "Flex S" style being somewhat more versatile than the also-showcased "Flex G". Especially if you combine it with the "Flex In-N-Out" (we'll just call it the "Flex N" for short) folding tech in the same video to allow both hinges to fold either way, which in turn would also consolidate the "Flex S" and "Flex G" styles demonstrated into a single device. One really nice thing about a three-panel display is that you can have near-identical aspect ratios between the screen as a whole and each individual segment. A 16:9 - or 256:144 - segment combined with two others becomes a 27:16 - or 243:144 - display. Have the two hinge sections make up that remaining 13:144 (so 6.5:144 each) and you've got perfect geometric similarity between its folded and unfolded states.

A few months ago, I was talking to a friend of mine who was the founder of a small business which ended up very popular and successful among the Steam userbase in the early 2010s. I won't go into details or who he is, but he'd been "cancelled" over something once and had been reassuring me over similar attacks on my own character a few months ago. This is what he said; it really stuck with me: In other words: like sharks smelling blood in the water, people can be almost gleeful to pick up the torches and pitchforks and dogpile on someone the horde has designated the latest bad guy, and they'll keep it up for like a week or so until they get bored and move onto the next target. It gives people an excuse to tap into that inner shrieking ape and pound a dude's skull in with an "OOK OOK OOK" without it impacting their conscience; quite the contrary, it's like a conscience drug because they're smiting evil in the name of whatever form of righteousness they've decided they're fighting for this week. They can feel proud of themselves for being a Good Person™, even if their idea of "being good" is attacking and heaping abuse on someone they barely know, all from behind the safety of a monitor and an arbitrary username, free from the specter of "consequences". Welcome to the online disinhibition effect. Quite the "GIFT" to our base instincts, if you catch my drift.

Would it help to have a live talk segment with Steve about the situation? Not to fuel the drama, but talk about the issues in an open, direct manner that has public eyes on it.

Is it possible to contact the winner of that auction and ask for it back to return to Billet, while fully reimbursing the buyer for what they paid? I think making an effort to actually procure and return the prototype on top of compensating Billet for what they asked for would be a major show of good faith.

While mistakes happen and it's good you're compensating them, I'm concerned about Billet's IP. How much of that prototype was a trade secret? Now it's out in the wild.

Hot damn, it go. I kinda wonder what would've happened if that "USB-inator" ran off of an AMD chip like the first PC you used. Might you have hit that 127-device limit after all? Or would that limit not have even mattered and the AMD chip just kept YOLO-ing it?

This was actually known about and half-expected for the Switch back when it was still called the NX. Maybe they're giving it another go this time. I feel like the Joy-Cons were a half-baked concept in general. I'd love to see what a more feature-rich rendition of the idea could be like.

Look, we all had to experience a decade of Sony milking that time they dunked on Don Mattrick's PR bungle at E3 2013 for brownie points and gamers cheering on anything they did afterwards no matter how egregious, all because "Well, remember when the Xbone was meant to include the Kinect?" Even now, we're still living in the aftermath of that, where PlayStation is considered the "default" console and Xbox is an afterthought, all because of "good guy Sony" and "big mean Microsoft". The course of Gen8 was literally decided by a "good versus evil" narrative that took place not merely in a single day before the generation even started in full, but in the span of a few hours of that single day. No one had any hope of catching the PS4 after June 10th, 2013, even though the PS4 wouldn't even launch for another five months yet. Doesn't matter that Xbox almost immediately backtracked on all of Mattrick's decisions and outright booted him out the door while it was still months before either the Xbone or PS4 even launched (thus making the two consoles practically identical in policies and features by the time of launch day), the damage was done and gamers were out for "karma". If the optics of "justice against Xbox" for a single bad E3 conference is entirely what's kept the playing field lopsided all these years, then the only way that's going to change is for there to be contrasting optics to balance it out and remove that "heroic Sony" image. To let that image go unanswered is to just let that lopsided status quo remain in perpetuity. And so long as said status quo remains, this is a console market where Sony alone gets to dictate the rules. Is it too much to ask to return to the golden age of Gen7 where all three brands thrived just about equally with Wii having a modest lead and 360 and PS3 being neck-and-neck behind it, rather than continuing the grisly sight of the PS4 utterly curbstomping the Xbone and Wii U? Yeah, Nintendo recovered with the Switch, but by arguably breaking away from the console race entirely to focus solely on a TV-enabled handheld rather than remaining in the same market segment as the others. The home console market is still Sony's domain to control unopposed and will be so long as they remain the "cool" console, and I don't like the state of the industry which has resulted from them being the undisputed top dog among home consoles. Gen8 was friggin' bleak to live through, and I say this as someone who'd been excited for it going in (albeit mainly for the Wii U and 3DS) before the consequences of that E3 made themselves clear and it became PlayStation's game industry for several dismal years. Trust me, I hate how this is the game we have to play too, but it doesn't change the fact that this is the game we have to play. Marketing and PR are everything in the console market. Everything else - from the games themselves, to the hardware powering them - is secondary. Optics is king.

I think the Microsoft Store has gotten better in recent years. For every program I use, if there's a version on the Microsoft Store (which actually remains updated in a timely manner *coughGIMPcough*), then I tend to switch to the Microsoft Store version because it makes keeping those programs updated absolutely painless. VLC, Blender, Inkscape, Audacity, and Paint.net to name only a few. Also, isn't the Microsoft Store supposed to have standard Windows program support nowadays, rather than requiring UWP?

Oh, I know ABK isn't just CoD. That's the point, and I said as much in my post.

I'm actually really happy about this. For this entire past decade, I've felt like PlayStation has deserved a massive boot up the ass. While this might not change much about the status quo in the console market - at least not in the short term - it's a reversal of fortune over all the years of Sony moneyhatting exclusives and "#BetterOnPlayStation" deals for Xbox to outright nab the biggest third-party entity in the business. Will Call of Duty still be coming to PlayStation? Sure, that was the deal - keep CoD on PS for the next decade - but on the other hand, it means a huge stable of all the other ABK IPs which Microsoft can use to bolster the Xbox library with exclusives now. No, exclusives in general aren't great, but so long as everyone's still playing in Sony's industry post-PS4, it's about time to start exploiting the rules that Sony themselves laid down. To me, this is just some long-overdue karma for all those years of PS4 dominance and a sign of things potentially returning to the era of healthy competition and mutual prosperity we all enjoyed in Gen7, rather than the withered, PlayStation-ruled game industry that everyone (except Sony) had to suffer through in Gen8. And I say this as a Nintendo guy more than anything. Congrats, Xbox!

Criminy, and that video released in 2011. Still continuing to use it after twelve years is one hell of a seal of approval for both its usability and build quality.

That tiny six-key one is used for stuff like Osu! last I checked. Microkeyboards like those are pretty much perfect for various rhythm games. With one more key, I could see that one being useful to emulate something like Beatmania IIDX. Aside from that, I love weird form-factors like this. Makes me wonder if you could come up with a "proper" version of that laser keyboard where you could indeed do something like pinch-to-scale or customizing the layout. Basically just turn it into a rudimentary pico projector. Kinda like a projector version of that upcoming Flux Keyboard - which looks fascinating, by the way; I hope you review that thing when the time comes.

I'm sure Linus and co. all have some strong opinions on what makes a good PC case, and I'd like to see what their ideal case layout would be. Especially with LTTStore taking on bigger and more custom-tooled projects like with the screwdriver and backpack, I wonder if this would be within their design and manufacturing capabilities. The only real custom electronics to consider would be the front I/O panel as far as I'm aware, while I imagine the rest case would just be machined sheet metal and externally-sourced parts like thumbscrews and fans, the latter of which you could partner with manufacturers like Noctua or Corsair for. Or even an option to just go completely barebones so the buyer can provide their own fans. Considering the channel's focus as a layperson's introduction to tech, I'd imagine it would be a case designed to be super easy for beginners to build in but with enough features and airflow that an expert builder could still be satisfied with the purchase.

All I want is for them to reintroduce the Ribbon and proper right-click menu into File Explorer and give me my Win10-styled Start Menu back. I am so close to upgrading to Win11 full-time, but I just can't get past those UI regressions. So until then, Win11 will just remain in a test VM while Win10 remains my host OS. In particular, it's the Start Menu that really bugs me. Win10 had the perfect Start Menu. Thanks to Metro Tiles, you had both classic-styled icons and full-functionality widgets in a single clean interface, laid out at exactly at the positions and sizes you want with no extra cruft aside from the full app list right next to it, which is useful in its own right. On the other hand, Win11 turns the Start Menu into an iPhone-styled app drawer where you have far less choice in how exactly you want things laid out, being unable to chose sizes or exact positions (since you can't have any gaps) for icons, while widgets are split off into their own separate panel for no reason. And with the full app list now tucked away behind a button, the other half of the Start Menu instead has these unremovable "recommendations", and those are just the same thing as Win10's Timeline or the Content View on Edge's new tab page: two features where everyone I know just turns them off. No one has any use for an ever-changing list of what their machine thinks they might want; they just want their stuff laid out exactly how they laid it out. I can find all my recent files in File Explorer's Quick Access pane already (or by right-clicking the appropriate app's icon), and new apps already appeared at the top of my full app list in a temporary "Recently added" segment. I know what's really gonna fill up that Recommended area in time is just gonna be ads.